HISTORY ON DISPLAY: Real things from Texas' past

NEW: Texas Czechs: Rooted in Tradition

Czech culture has played an instrumental role in shaping the iconic Texas landscape and its sights, sounds, and tastes can still be found throughout Texas on any given day. Like many immigrant groups, Czechs brought dance, food, language, music, and other cultural traditions with them. The Texas Czech community maintains and passes on its sense of identity by continuing to practice those traditions and creating some particular to Texas Czechs.

Texas Czechs: Rooted in Tradition captures this activity — presenting a contemporary picture of the diversity and richness of Texas Czech culture today. It includes photographs, artifacts, and documentary films. On display in the Aynesworth-Wright House in Sprinkle Corner.

Brought to you by PolkaWorks

WHEELS OF TIME

Featuring an original Texas stagecoach, the Governor's Coach and many other priceless carriages and buggies -- both fancy and plain -- this exclusive display takes you back to the 1800s for a real-life lesson about horse-drawn transportation. These historic vehicles were once owned and used by some of Austin's most prominent early citizens, a rare collection that is unexcelled in its originality anywhere else in Texas.

Featured are a mud wagon, a surrey with the fringe on top, a fancy runabout, a Victoria coach, a five-window landau, a doctor's buggy that was once owned by prominent physician whose house is located nearby. On display in the Wroe Storefront in Sprinkle Corner.

Brought to you by Aubrey Smith Family Foundation, Andrew and John Fish and VisionTeam

TIKWAN-TIC

They are the First Texans, the Tonkawa Indians, who lived for centuries along the banks of Walnut Creek and who were the native tribe to the Austin area. Before you tour our authentic Tonkawa Encampment just down the trail, as one of just a few documented original Tonkawa campsites in Texas, peruse this exhibit to see how the Tonkawa lived and prospered in the years before the first white settlers arrived in Austin. Featuring original Tonkawa artifacts, photos and displays, this exclusive exhibit is sure to engage your imagination about life in Central Texas in the 1840s and before.

Featuring original Tonkawa artifacts, photos and displays, this exclusive exhibit is sure to engage your imagination about life in Central Texas in the 1840s and before, one of the only such displays in Texas. On display in the Aynesworth-Wright House in Sprinkle Corner.

Brought to you by the Traditional Tonkawa Tribe of Oklahoma, Michael and Sally Ward and Steve Ashley

FLAGS OF FREEDOM

Because it was once its own country, after a hard-fought battle for independence from Mexico in the 1830s, Texas has as much colorful revolutionary history as the United States itself -- moreso, perhaps, to some. And just as Betsy Ross made herself famous for sewing one of the first U.S. flags, so did Texas have Joanna Troutman and others who created independence banners that inspired frontier troops to turn the their treasured land into a republic called Texas.

This display features the many flags of independence of both Texas and the United States, a colorful learning exhibit where the spirit of freedom can be seen in red, white, blue, green and yellow -- in banners that are, in some cases, strikingly similar. On display in Wessels Hall, our century-old dance hall in Sprinkle Corner.

Brought to you by Freedom Place

GOING, GOING, GONE

Auctioneers have been around for centuries, fast-talking hucksters who can literally sell anything with aplomb. Their tongue-twisting roll of auction-speak has been part of Texas history since the beginning of the Republic, and this display gives you a fast-paced lesson in how auctioneers work, how they well and how they played a role in Texas' colorful history.

Historical photos, displays and storyboards tell the story of auctioneering in Texas, from the early 1800s until now -- a profession that has adapted through the years, but remains much the same. Come practice your fast-speaking auctioneers' voice in this exclusive display in the Tate House Gallery in Sprinkle Corner.

Brought to you by the Texas Auctioneers Association and PolkaWorks

CHISHOLM TRAIL

The famous cattle-drive route that once stretched from near San Antonio to the railheads of Kansas crossed the property where Pioneer Farms sits today. On the 150th anniversary of the famous trail, this display replicates what Texans would have seen in the lats 1860s -- just after the Civil War when the trail was first opened -- on a restored section of Blackland Prairie where genuine Longhorn cattle graze once again.

Come see these beefy bovines in their native Texas environment, and get a sense of how tough life on the trail would have been, when your workplace was in the saddle in all types of weather, traversing all types of terrain in a ride that would take months from start to finish. On the walking trail between Sprinkle Corner and the German Emigrant Farm.

Brought to you by Betty Baker, Van Granger and Kingsley Construction

Plan your visit today to see these exclusive exhibits, where you can learn about Texas colorful past by experiencing its actual history.